Randy Morris studies organ transplantation, finding ways to keep the body from attacking transplants as “foreign.” At Stanford, his team has designed two novel anti-rejection drugs that are now widely used to protect organs of all kinds.
This summer, Morris experienced a transplantation of his own.
After three decades at the Medical School, where he is a professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of transplantation immunology, he is taking a leave of absence in Basel, Switzerland, to head the world’s largest group of transplantation scientists.
In his new post with pharmaceutical giant Novartis Inc., Morris manages nearly 120 senior researchers, compared with 20 to 30 on the Farm. While there, he says, “I’m hoping to learn new approaches to drug discovery and development from people in a variety of disciplines. In the last five years, the very early phases of drug discovery have come to depend less on empirical observation and more on very advanced biology, chemistry and physics.”
Kay (Goenne) Morris, a former psychology major and undergraduate admissions officer at Stanford, also moved to Basel, as did the couple’s four cats. Daughter Christine, ’01, and son Robert (Princeton ’03) stayed behind.
How is the switch to Switzerland affecting daily life?
“Language is the greatest stumbling block for me,” says Kay, who is now studying German. “I feel like a deaf-mute at times. The newspapers and signs in Basel are written in high German, the language of the street is an unwritten form of Swiss German unique to the Basel area, and snippets of English, French and Italian are thrown into ordinary conversation. A frequently used expression, for instance, is ‘merci vielmals,’ which is ‘thank you’ in French and ‘many times’ in German.”
Most everyone at Novartis speaks English, says Randy, although his secretary and many others are equally fluent in German, Swiss German, Spanish, Italian and French.
For the first time since they married, the Morrises have no car, relying instead on an efficient public transportation system. “I learned the hard way that the trams don’t run all night,” Randy recalls. “After a very late night at work, I ended up walking three kilometers home.”
And then there’s the recycling.
“The garbage disposal system is incredibly convoluted,” says Kay. “Burnables go under the sink in a specially purchased bag, while separate bins at neighborhood disposal areas are devoted individually to aluminum cans, tin cans, green glass, brown glass, clear glass, cooking oil and cooking oil containers. Paper and cardboard are bundled for monthly curbside pickup. Used batteries go back to the store of purchase.
“So far, so good,” she adds. “But what do I do with the broken coffee carafe that has metal and plastic trim?”
